


for all of my days

by Florchis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Back Together, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, Multi, Polyamory, Professor Marston and the wonder women AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25831564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: When Fitz called asking to be picked up from the hospital, Daisy expected to take them home and then return to her own misery. Instead, she finds what she was longing for but didn't dare hope.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28
Collections: (I'll stop the world and) Melt with you {Romantic Fitzskimmons}, AOS AU August 2020, Florchis does AU August





	for all of my days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [26stars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/gifts).



> Written for the prompt "Your favorite movie AU" for @aosficnet2 AU August.
> 
> TW: mentions of a character having an impending fatal disease. 
> 
> If you haven't seen the movie, brief resume to help you enjoy this more: Elizabeth (Jemma) and Bill (Fitz) are a married couple that got together with Olive (Daisy). They live together and co-parent all their children for a long time until a neighbor walks in on them and that causes issues for their children. After that, Elizabeth asks Olive to leave and a short time after Bill finds out he has cancer.

The heels of her shoes click against the linoleum. Daisy thought this hallway was never going to feel long like the first time and yet life keeps on throwing curveballs at her. 

Once she reaches her destination, she hesitates before placing her hand on top of the handle. She is not afraid of catching something by touching something on a hospital- raising three children does make you unfeasible to pretty much anything-, but it wouldn’t be true to say that she is not afraid, because she is. She is afraid and she is angry- despite all her best attempts, anger is the only alternative she has found to aching and longing every time she saw them during the last four months. She wishes she could be a better person, especially for her children, but she is only a woman and, honestly, both Jemma and Fitz really try her at times.

She takes a deep breath and finally opens the door. If this is a bad thing- she doesn’t know how there can be any more bad things in stock for her, after the breakup and finding out that Fitz is dying, but she won’t test fate-, she’d rather know and start dealing with it as soon as possible.

She doesn’t say hello when she enters the room: talking to them without bursting into tears requires a lot of self-control and therefore she has to make every word count. They both turn around at the sound of the door opening, and Daisy’s heart flutters at seeing Fitz standing. She hasn’t seen him since the day he was admitted, but the stories the boys have been telling her weren’t really pretty.

They are both just… there, looking at her, and it is hard enough for her to be looking at them both with the soft light of the morning at their backs without breaking down, so she just stays near the door, one hand still on the handle. Daisy Johnson does not backtrack unless she is being pushed away, but being defensive and cautious has been proven a necessity in the past.

“Want me to take the case to the car?” Her voice resonates in the too-quiet room and it makes her wince. Fitz looks tired and pale, but that is to be expected. Jemma, instead, is being uncharacteristically still and Daisy has to repress the physical manifestation of the chills she is getting from her.

“No… no, thank you,” replies Fitz after a long pause, and Jemma turns her head around to look at him with big eyes. “Thank you for coming.”

She doesn’t want his gratitude, considering that she was willing to give her life to them and they rejected it.

“Well, then I’ll wait for you in the car.”

“No, Daisy, wait!” Fitz takes a step towards her, but he is still too weak and it takes Jemma lending him her shoulder for him to be able to stand straight again.

Her heart is breaking but they pushed her away: it kills her to know that they are hurting, but they don’t want to share their suffering with her, and she would very much prefer to undergo hers privately. 

“What do you want?” Anger is always so much easy to showcase than pain. Anger doesn’t make her feel vulnerable. “You called me, and I came. If you don’t need me, I am going.”

“But we do.” Fitz’s voice pierces through her and makes her stop her retreat. She wishes she had a light on her side, like Jemma does, to hide the tears that are battling to fall from her eyes. Fitz turns around and looks at Jemma, who very pointedly only then raises her eyes from the floor to look at him. “Jemma, you have to promise you will let me talk for three minutes without interrupting me. Can you do that?”

Daisy can see the hesitation in Jemma’s face; ever since she met them and even before that, they always were this inseparable unit made of two halves that fully completed each other. To see Fitz pulling apart from that, even slightly, is staggering. 

“Sure.”

Fitz takes a deep breath and then lets it all out in one exhalation like it’s something he has been rehearsing for a long time. Daisy wonders if this has been making rounds around his head ever since the same day she left. “Jemma was wrong. She loves you, and she can’t imagine her life without you.”

“Fitz!”

“Three minutes!” It is good to see that the disease hasn’t totally broken his spirit yet, that he can still be the grumpy hothead she remembers. “You promised me three minutes!”

“Not if you were going to speak for me!”

“I am not speaking for you, I am speaking for myself!” He lets go of Jemma’s shoulder and walks towards Daisy, who is glued on her spot, incapable of rationalizing what is going on. His steps are slow but secure. He looks terrible, Daisy notices once he is closer and holding her hands: there are deep bags under his eyes and his skin is pastier than normal, but the honesty in his eyes is the same as it always was and his hands are still warm. “Please come back to us, Daisy. We are sorry and we love you.”

How many times has she dreamed about having them- mostly Jemma, but also him- saying those words to her again? But this is not a dream, and things are never that easy in real life.

“I don’t need you. I made a new life for myself.”

“I know.” There is pride in his eyes but also desperation, and Daisy refuses to look but she could swear that Jemma is crying three steps behind them. “But are you happy?”

She lets go of his hands like they are burning. They didn’t ask this question four months ago, why bother to start asking it now?

“Does it matter?”

Fitz scoffs, and both Daisy and Jemma reach out a hand to him, worried that it might turn into a coughing fit, and both retreat their hands when they notice each other.

“Of course it matters! It’s all that matters!” He sits on the footboard on the bed, catches his breath. “We gave up on this too easily. All of us. And for what? To be liked? To be respected? To be _decent?_ ” He says the word with so much scorn that Daisy winces- she gave herself to them too young and too entirely to even know what something different looks and feels like. But for them… He was a college professor, for God’s sake. She can understand Jemma’s point of view, a bit, even if she hates it.

Jemma walks to his side and she is definitely crying. Daisy reaches for a handkerchief in her pocket before she remembers herself and balls it up tight in her fist.

“Fitz, the doctors said to not exert yourself.”

He looks at her with so much love while he strokes Jemma’s cheek that Daisy whimpers. 

“Sooner or later, there is no denying the fact that I am dying, Jemma.” He makes a pause, looks at them both, daring them to deny what they all know is true. “I am dying, and I can’t stand to think that you will be left alone with your shame and your regrets, knowing that you loved her and she loved you and you gave her up. And for what? For _them?”_ He gestures to the door and Jemma’s face hardens while she takes a step back.

“No. Not for them. For our children. I can’t put the weight of us on their shoulders.” Jemma’s words are sharp despite the tears that are now falling openly down her cheeks. Daisy drives her nails on her palms to repress the instinct to walk to her.

“Instead, we are depriving them of a happy family to grow up, and for all inheritance, we are leaving them our shame. Outstanding parents we are.” He is not looking at them anymore but at his bedside table, where there is still a picture of Margaret, James and Anthony smiling. Dais's eyes linger on the picture too: her beautiful boys and the precious girl she considered a daughter that she hasn't seen in four months. When they all snap out of the spell, Fitz looks so much older than before. “I said my part. I have nothing else to add but a piece of advice: Jemma, if you love her, you should tell her before it is too late.”

Her heart is thumping inside her chest when she looks at Jemma. Her face is distorted in a grimace of pain that Daisy has never seen on her and for the first time since the split up, she considers that Jemma might have suffered through this as much as Daisy herself did. It doesn’t make things better, but it makes them… different.

Jemma takes a deep breath before turning to face Daisy fully.

“We live in a world that has refused to give me many things. It refused to give me my Ph.D.” Daisy leaves out an involuntary laugh: of course, this woman would never let that go, and of course, that shaped the way she sees the world. Jemma’s trembling lips form a smile before she turns somber again. “It has refused to give me a cure for Fitz. I am so used to it not giving me that I couldn’t realize that I can’t allow it to also take things from me.” She shakes her head and wipes out the tears from her cheeks. Only then Daisy realizes she has started crying too. “I used to think love couldn’t be enough. But it has to be enough, it has to be because I can’t imagine our lives without you, and…Love is all I have and I wish I had something else to offer you, Daisy, but I don’t. I only have me, us, and this love we both feel for you.” The hard facade falls piece by piece with each word and by the time she is done there is nothing but the completely open Jemma that is usually reserved for the bedroom or their children. “Please, Daisy, will you take us back?”

Despite not believing it would ever come, she had fantasized about this moment a lot, and she knows exactly what she wants to reply, “I want to keep my job. The children are old enough and it makes me feel valued.”

Jemma lets out a laugh choked with tears while Fitz chips in from the bed, “That can be arranged.”

“And if we ever split up again, we are not separating the kids. The boys suffered without her sister and I missed Margaret more than I missed you. If we are trying to do better by them, we have to think of them first and foremost.”

“Of course.” Fitz walks to Jemma, takes her hand, and then brings her to Daisy, takes her hand too. “I love you both.” 

Daisy wipes some more tears from Jemma’s face with the handkerchief that always was destined for her: touching her again after so long feels like jumpstarting her senses, but what a feeling to be alive again. 

“I want you to love me for all of my days,” she admits, and Jemma smiles at her shakily and it’s the most beautiful thing Daisy has ever seen. 

“Good. Because I want the same thing.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
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> This author replies to comments (but it might take a while). If you'd rather not get a reply, please add *whispers* to your comment.



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